Posts tagged with "Atelier 10":

Taking environmental stresses into account when designing a building is typical, but rising tides, heat waves, extreme winds and other climate change-driven conditions present new challenges to building envelopes. Ahead of the upcoming Facades+ conference in New York City on April 19 and 20, AN sat down with Yan Chu of Adamson Associates Architects to discuss what can be done differently.
Chu will be presenting as part of a 2:30 PM symposium panel on April 19 titled “Re-evaluating Metrics: Thermal Performance of Building Enclosures and Future Climate Change.” Chu will be joined by Nico Kienzl of Atelier Ten, Ken Kunkel of NC STATE, and Elizabeth Tomlinson of TKDA.
Architect’s Newspaper: As climate change becomes more of a factor, how does facade performance need to change?
Yan Chu: We design our facades and mechanical systems based on certain climatic data for that region. For New York City, it’s 11 degrees Fahrenheit, 17-mile-per-hour [winds], this is data all of us use every day and know by heart. These numbers have changed very slightly over time. I wonder if there’s a more fundamental rethinking of these basic design functions that we need to make to attack climate change from multiple fronts, beyond just increasing insulation value and decreasing air leakage rate.
The data is all based on historical weather data. Every fourth-year cycle when this weather design data comes out, it’s based on the last 20 years, and that’s how [The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers] ASHRAE derives their design position that you and I and all of the engineers use. If we know that climate change is going to take us to a whole new level of weather conditions, why aren’t we using projected data? What are we actually using as our design basis?
There is a whole sector of the design community trying to address resiliency and survivability. We need to find a way to fold that into the design process, and something we need to consider to holistically address climate change in terms of the building envelope. The idea of this panel is to talk about those issues.
AN: Are there any big picture things that architects, engineers and designers can do?Chu: The passive house strategy is brilliant because it addresses the performance of the building together with the occupant’s comfort holistically. It really is a holistic way of thinking of design, and moving forward, it’s the kind of mentality we need to adopt.
Whether we’re talking about glazed façades or more opaque facade elements, I think the challenge is to get owner incentives to adopt some of these holistic strategies into a larger scale. If we design a building today with the 2014 or 2016 energy code, I know for a fact it’s already not sufficient for when the next code comes. So I think the biggest challenge for us is, how do we incentivize buildings owners, occupants, and designers to address climate change without depending on the building code telling them to do so? The nice thing is that in Europe, the passive house movement is really being brought by the private sector. How can we bring that mentality to the U.S.? Especially for very large projects?
AN: What will the impact of climate change be on envelopes?Chu: It depends on the climate and depends on what extreme events we’re being challenged with. On one hand, we have to re-evaluate the average condition; in some parts of the world, the temperature will increase, but in some locations, temperatures will actually decrease.
The interesting thing is that certain wall systems have certain advantages in one climate region over another. That idea is limited because design is about flexibility, and you don’t want to prescribe a system that an architect has to design to. The idea of designing to what is the ‘norm’, and what extreme events are, that’s a huge question.
Citing one example, flood resistance at storefronts at the ground level. That’s something new that all the architects in New York City are working on, not only specifying how this system works and what test criteria it conforms to, but also, how does it function in a normal day? We’re way in the beginning stage of understanding what that even is. It’s such a new thing that we know we’ll have to go on to full-on testing for this wall system to know what it can accommodate.
Whether or not we end up with a standard IGU or something thicker is still something we’re working through. And how does that affect the interior conditions? It’s a big question mark, and it’s only one thing that we’re dealing with. Are we designing for a 50-year building, a 100-year building? The idea of durability has to come into play. That determines what extreme events we’re designing for, and results in a vastly different building.
Facades+ in New York City will run from April 19 until April 20, 2018. Registration is still open and available at this link.

“We don’t need walls anymore. We need living, breathing systems that provide so much more to the urban realm than keeping in conditioned air and keeping out noise and pollutants.” - Will Wright, AIA|LA

Los Angeles’ 2016 Facades+ Conference, presented by The Architect’s Newspaper, is the 18th event in an ongoing series of conferences and forums that have unfolded in cities across the nation, including New York City, Miami, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, D.C., and Chicago. Held at the L.A. Hotel Downtown, the conference incorporated architects, engineers, fabricators, and innovative material manufacturers into a multidisciplinary two-day event covering the state of building envelope design thinking today.
The daylong symposium kicked off with spirited remarks by Will Wright, Director of Government & Public Affairs at AIA L.A., where he set forth a plea for stronger emphasis on localism and craftsmanship.
Co-chaired by Kevin Kavanagh and Alex Korter of CO Architects, the event included AIA LA, four local architecture schools – UCLA, USC, Woodbury, and Cal Poly Pomona – and a robust collection of Los Angeles-based architecture firms. Four panel discussions throughout the day covered the influence of building envelopes on business, education, structural design, and data analysis. The conversations engaged audience participation through an interactive, web-based tool called Sli.do.
In a morning panel discussion titled “Money Well Spent? An Owner’s Perspective on the Value of Facades,” moderator Kevin Kavanagh spoke with representatives from Kaiser Permanente, Kitchell, and The Ratkovich Company on finding the right balance between aesthetics, energy performance, fiscal responsibility, and efficient project scheduling.
During breaks, conference attendees attended a “Methods+Materials” gallery that highlighted innovative building envelope materials such as electrochromic glass, metal mesh fabric with integrated media display, and ultra-compact surfacing products.
The symposium was highlighted by keynote addresses from Enrique Norten and Eric Owen Moss.

Norten’s opening keynote set forth an argument for a socially responsible architecture integrated into the city via infrastructural, landscape, and public space projects. He cited works of his firm, TEN Arquitectos, which incorporate topographical manipulations of the landscape to establish social spaces of public engagement. His work intentionally camouflages the building envelope into a contextual landscape—be it an adjacent park or cityscape—to dissolve the separation between public and private.
Eric Owen Moss spoke in the afternoon, questioning at what point the conceptual content of a project becomes lost amidst constructional realities. Through recent work of his firm, Eric Owen Moss Architects, he focused on building envelope details that strayed from original design intent, transforming in concept and tectonics as engineers, fabricators, and contractors participated in the process.
In a panel discussion titled “Bytes, Dollars, EUI: Data Streams and Envelopes,” Moderator William Menking, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Architect’s Newspaper, spoke with Atelier 10, Gehry Technologies, and CPG regarding tools and processes facilitating facade analysis and optimization. Sameer Kashyap (Gehry Technologies) shared perhaps the most bewildering stat of the day—that GT was able to script processes which allowed two people to produce over 1200 shop drawings per day for 33 weeks in the coordination of a highly complex facade system.
Paul Zajfen of CO Architects rounded out the day with a presentation titled “Facades: A Manifestation of Client, Culture, Climate,” where he argued for contextually specific design producing a facade that “would not be possible at any other time—and in no other place.”
The symposium was followed on day two with a series of “dialog” and “lab” workshops covering net-zero facade systems, digital fabrication processes, curtain wall design, and advanced facade analysis.
A full roster of organizers and sponsors can be found on the conference website. The Los Angeles event was the first in 2016 of a seven-city lineup, and will be followed by a Facades+AM morning forum in Washington, D.C., on March 10th. The next two-day conference will take place in New York City April 21st and 22nd.

BIG news for downtown Pittsburgh: New York–based Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), West 8 Landscape Architects, and Atelier Ten were tapped by private developers McCormack Baron Salazar and the Pittsburgh Penguins to create a master plan for 28 acres in Pittsburgh's Lower Hill District. Today, those plans were unveiled.
The plan will redevelop public space around the erstwhile Civic Arena, build a new public space across from the Consol Energy Center, and dialogue with the city's vertiginous topography to create bike and pedestrian paths that connect the Hill District with Uptown and Downtown.
In all, the New Lower Hill Master Plan calls for 1.2 million square feet of residential construction as well as 1.25 million square feet of retail and commercial space. The project is expected to break ground in 2016 and cost an estimated $500 million.
“The master plan for the Lower Hill District is created by supplementing the existing street grid with a new network of parks and paths shaped to optimize the sloping hill side for human accessibility for all generations," Bjarke Ingels, BIG's founding partner, explained in a statement. "The paths are turned and twisted to always find a gentle sloping path leading pedestrians and bicyclists comfortably up and down the hillside. The resulting urban fabric combines a green network of effortless circulation with a quirky character reminiscent of a historical downtown. Topography and accessibility merging to create a unique new part of Pittsburgh."
Landscape architects West 8 designed terraced parks and walkways informed by granite outcroppings characteristic of the surrounding Allegheny Mountains.
Engineers and environmental design consultants at Atelier Ten developed sustainability guidelines that will encourage district heating and cooling, as well a stormwater retention for on-site irrigation. See the gallery for more master plan images and schematic diagrams.

A research center in Manhattan gets a custom facade solution for energy efficiency and user comfort.

Ennead Architects and Heintges & Associates recently completed construction on the 475,000-square-foot Belfer Research Center, Weill Cornell Medical College’s latest expansion to Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The building’s facade includes a unique double skin system on the southern face to define the medical campus’ identity, provide ample natural light without glare to the laboratory spaces, and create a highly efficient envelope.
Heintges and Ennead previously worked together on the neighboring Weill Greenberg Center in 2007, said Todd Schliemann, partner in Ennead Architects and designer of both WCMC’s Weill Greenberg Center and new Belfer Research Building. Among the strategies employed in that project was the use of custom ceramic fritting to cut down on sun loading and glare. The team repeated that strategy at Belfer, applying ceramic frit to both sides of the building’s outer curtain wall. The exterior of the outermost layer features a white frit pattern designed to reflect sunlight, while a black frit pattern on the interior surface helps reduce glare and increase visibility through the glass.

Facade Manufacturer Permasteelisa, BGT, Interpane

Architects Ennead Architects, Heintges and Associates, Atelier 10

Location New York

Date of Completion 2014

System double insulated dual glass curtain wall with ceramic frit

The double curtain wall produces a chimney effect that reduces cooling loads. For insulation, the inner layer is composed of argon-filled insulated glass units. “We conducted a lot of thermal analysis to minimize bridging through the outriggers,” said John Pachuta, a partner at Heintges. The framing system for the inner wall is thermally broken; a layer of mineral-fiber insulation behind the frame helps improve performance. Permasteelisa manufactured the 5-foot units in its Montreal facility. Glass from BGT was treated with an Interpane coating, and outrigger connections were affixed to the frame every 5 feet. The outriggers also extend to support the outer skin.
For the outer wall, unitizing the unique geometries helped maintain the building schedule, despite its complex appearance. “We learned that even with a subtle shift in plane, you can still use standard parts and pieces,” said Schliemann. The team was able to reduce the number of IGUs and achieve a more monolithic appearance by using larger, 10-and-a-half-foot panels, ultimately requiring fewer joints. The grid breaks into 21-foot repetitions, in order to accommodate window washing balconies that also provide faceted cavities in the exterior curtain wall. The cavity between the two skins measures between 18 and 25 inches to accommodate an aluminum catwalk, which is supported by the inner wall’s outriggers. Access points to the catwalk can be reached from the interior for cleaning and maintenance.
With increasingly erratic environmental conditions in the Northeast corridor, the entire system had to be secure yet resilient. “We considered having support members starting from the base building structure—from the perimeter beams or columns to extend through the inner curtain wall—but to reduce thermal bridging it was more effective to have outriggers extend through the weather enclosure,” said Pachuta. “Instead, steel outriggers support the catwalk and outer screen wall that are directly attached to the mullions of the inner curtain wall.” Mullions of the inner curtain wall are reinforced with steel, and are anchored to the outer wall at the edge of each unit.
The faceted cavities produce good ventilation, but also leave the protected areas open for pigeons to nest. En lieu of standard bird wire, the team developed a custom steel frame with tensioned, horizontal stainless steel rods ¾ inches apart. Though the system keeps the sky rats at bay, the wire is no wider than a bicycle spoke and does not impede views from inside.